TheCable

Hackers have targeted the website of Ghana’s electoral commission as votes are counted after tightly contested elections.

In a tweet, the commission urged people to ignore the “fake results” circulating on social media, and announced that its website is up again.

President John Mahama is facing a strong challenge from main opposition leader Nana Akufo-Addo.

Wednesday’s election passed off peacefully, but voting was postponed to Thursday in one constituency after voting material failed to arrive on time.

A run-off will be held later in the month if neither of the two main candidates secures more than 50% of the votes.

In the previous election in 2012, Mahama defeated Akufo-Addo by less than 300,000 votes.

“We deplore the attempt to hack the EC’s [electoral commission’s] website. Please respect the integrity and independence of the EC,” it said in a tweet.

The website was offline for about four hours, but the commission had not put up results overnight so there was no chance of any tampering, the BBC quoted a spokesman as saying.

All seven candidates have pledged to keep the process peaceful but an opposition supporter died when a rally tuned violent on Monday.

Final results are expected in the next two days, although provisional results from constituencies are being released.